So, about a year and a half ago (don't remember exactly when), I bought a color laser printer -- an HP Color LaserJet 2605dn, to be precise. I'd lusted after one for a long time, and finally the price of that model (which had all the features I wanted) dropped to the point where I could afford one.

Only one problem -- I never got it to work as well as I wanted it to. It seemed to have chronic color-alignment issues that the calibration tools could never quite fix. Eventually, I lost my patience with it and bought a Dell 3130cn instead. It's been sitting unused for months, and I'm finally to the point where I'm tired of looking at it.

Does anyone have a use for it? I'm literally giving it away to anyone who wants -- the only catch is that you have to come get it in Millis, MA. (I suppose if I'm already planning to visit you in the next week or two, I could be talked into delivering it, but you'd better ask really nicely. It's a heavy beast. :)

If not, it's getting exiled to the land of misfit printers real soon now.

A friend of mine has two adorable cats who (heartbreakingly) can't stay with her anymore. She's trying to find a good home for them in the MA/RI/southern NH area. If you know anyone who might like a wonderful pair of kitties (or just want to know more so you can judge who might be interested), go look at http://simon-apricot.livejournal.com for details.

(And, yes, frozencapybara and I considered it. But there are logistical problems, and Taichou was Grumpy McSulkypants for a solid month when we adopted Hammond... I don't think he'd deal at all well with two additional interlopers.)

So, in an attempt to improve the (so unreliable it might as well be nonexistent) cellphone reception at our house, today I set up a cellular repeater. I'm still playing around with placement of the unit, and the wiring is strung along the wall instead of through it, but early results seem encouraging.

As such... if any of you that have my and frozencapybara's cellphone numbers have reason to call us in the next week or so, try the cellphone first, to help me test this thing fully before I pay an electrician to run the cable from the attic to a wall plate. (If it doesn't work, call the land line as usual.)

(And for those of you with access to the Gweep Rolodex, our listings there are up to date.)

So, a few months back, one of my unix shell accounts underwent a server migration... and, apparently, I totally failed to reconfigure the mail-forwarding from it to my primary email. I only realized this a few minutes ago, when a friend informed me that they got a "this dude's mailbox is full" bounce message.

D'oh.

Since the mailspool in question had accumulated several thousand messages, 97% of which were spam, I just said "ah, screw it" and deleted all of them. So, if you've sent me email at a gweep.net account (any server) or my twilightsun.com address since October or so, I didn't see it. (If you sent it to a gmail account, you're fine.)

It's fixed now, so any address you have for me in your address books should be functional again.

If you've ever watched a NASCAR race*, you know how it works. Someone loses control, all hell breaks loose, and there are parts flying everywhere. Then, when they show the replay, something catches your eye. That guy, right there... right in the middle of it all, easily within six inches of getting walloped by two or three other vehicles as they careen past at odd angles, and yet... at the end of it all, possibly through no effort of his own, he's gotten through without a scratch. You watch another replay from a different angle, and you still can't figure out how he managed it.

Well, tonight, at about 6:45pm on I-495 north, between I-93 and Route 28 (I guess that'd put it in West Andover or thereabouts)... I was that guy.

(And, why, yes, I am pretty much just copying frozencapybara's post verbatim. It's a good post, and I'm lazy. :)

As of today, we are officially homeowners.

Background: After a monumentally depressing few days involving another house that looked good on the first glance but fell off our list after a second visit, we pretty much stopped talking about the house hunt -- to anyone. This didn't change when frozencapybara attended a promising open house, or when we made an offer on the house the next day, or as we've been madly running around trying to finalize the deal since then. We didn't post about it in the first few weeks because a) we are masters of irrational paranoia and superstition, and b) if the deal did fall through, as we discovered with the first house we made an offer on, it's even more of a bitch to have to explain it to everyone later. And then we didn't post because, well, it'd been a week and why bother, and we'll post later, etc.

So, as of about 11:30 AM today, we have signed a whole lot of papers, are in a whole lot of debt (we're told it's "good debt" :), and are members of the landed gentry, so if this were 1794, I would be able to vote. Too bad the primary's already over.

Millis is a tiny little town southwest of Boston, about midway between 128 and 495. It is mostly rural, and despite being well within 495, has a much more rural feel than where we are now. As we are both originally from the middle of nowhere, we are very happy about this.

The house is a split-level built in the late 60s. It is mostly beige-colored with some brick on the front.

We're not posting the address on LJ. We plan to send out a "we've moved" email to people we think will care that we've moved by the end of May. If you want to know the address before that, drop me an email - we don't mind giving it out at this point, we're just not bothering with the mass email until it's more relevant. Similarly, if you want to know the address and haven't gotten an email by the end of May, let me know, and don't be offended, we're sure we'll forget a number of critical people.

Yes, we will need help with painting. Also, if you have an opinion on what color the living room should be, let me know. It is currently a horrible greyish pink. We're thinking a light bluish purple.

I've mostly stopped doing memes, but jetwolf pointed out this one in her own LJ, and it amused me more than any meme in a long time. So, here I go. :)

Go to the Wikipedia home page in your preferred language and click "random article." That is your band's name. Click "random article" again. That is your album name. Click "random article" 15 more times. Those are the tracks on your album.

It started out promisingly enough. Plans were made for Anne and I to head up to Maine to visit my family (hers still being inconveniently located in Ohio), teinedreugan and lilairen agreed to take care of Tai while we were away, the weather looked pretty good for driving, and frozencapybara and I were generally in a good mood.

Then my back went out.

I can't even tell you how I did it. I had just hauled a small load of stuff to my car -- but it was nothing big, just a couple of small rolling suitcases, no heavy lifting -- and it was on the way back to the apartment door, mid-stride, that my tailbone said "um, no" and I kind of crumpled into a heap. This was followed by a couple of minutes of uncomfortable experimentation, as I tried to some means of getting back inside that didn't involve complex operations like "standing up" or "moving my back in any measurable manner".

We did make it up to Maine, though needless to say I didn't drive. The (extended) family dinner on turkey day itself was enjoyable, at least, even if I was barely ambulatory for it. The low point of the weekend was the emergency room trip (which didn't accomplish much, but did reassure me that I hadn't somehow broken anything), followed by the "ah, screw it" decision to just come back to Massachusetts a day early. Saturday was a bit better (thank heavens for the heating pad), and I rejoined the rest of my species by walking upright on Sunday. My back still isn't right, but it's (slowly, glacially) getting there.

But, hey, at least all this eliminated any possibility of a Black Friday shopping trip.

For my birthday and/or wedding present, frozencapybara decided to get devious. And as a result of her plotting with syrusb over the last few months (this started in July)... I now have this. And this, for good measure.

(If I said I was going to start making actual LJ posts that aren't zero-content meme posts, no one would believe me, right? Yeah. Ok, I won't say that. How about "I'll only post one meme for every three 'real' posts I make, at most?" Will that fly? :)

I wouldn't even do this one, but it's pegging my nostalgia meter. It reminds me of the USENET lyrics quizzes we used to respond to (and occasionally post) back at WPI.

I recently purchased a new PC. Specifically, an HP Pavilion d4100e with an AMD Athlon 64x2 4200+ CPU. I've been using it for a few weeks, and I'm very happy with it -- but I've been a little concerned about the CPU temperatures. (I figure a little paranoia in this case can't hurt.) So, I picked up a Zalman CNPS9500 heatsink. It's HUGE, so I took the case/motherboard measurements it told me to take, and it looks like it'll fit.

Only one problem. I can't get the godforsaken STOCK heatsink off. Removing the retainer clip and the two exposed screws in the plastic base didn't do any good, so -- knowing that my hardware luck is the stuff of campfire horror stories -- I gave up on it for now. (An unusual display of sensibility, for me.)

It seems to me that this shouldn't be a big hassle, but it is one regardless. I'm loath to ask a friend to attempt it, because... well, if something went wrong, that would be VERY bad, and I don't want to deal with that on a personal level. But I don't know what, if any, other options I have. Professional repair shops might be an option, but I shudder to think what they'd charge me.